


consumptive manticore

by consumptive_sphinx



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Catmonster AU, Character Study, Declawing, Gen, Manticore AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:29:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8610577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consumptive_sphinx/pseuds/consumptive_sphinx
Summary: based heavily on this:shapechangersinwinter.tumblr.com/tagged/manticore-au





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> based heavily on this:
> 
> shapechangersinwinter.tumblr.com/tagged/manticore-au

James knows how they look at him. 

 

They think he doesn’t  _ (quiet little Jemmy Madison, with his cough and his stump tail) _ , but he does.

 

_ (But of course it was necessary, _ they say, when they think he isn’t listening, and  _ Could you really trust an undocked manticore?) _

 

_ Yes, _ James wants to snarl, but he keeps quiet and agreeable. There are humans who hold him up as proof that manticores aren’t  _ all _ savage, and there are just as many who claim him as evidence that the savage ones could be as civilized as him if they only tried hard enough. James hears them all, and does not respond.

 

The docking tames them, according to humans and sphinxes. Manticores aren’t as wild without their venom, not as rough. Not as dangerous. James has his own opinions about that, but he keeps them to himself and coughs as pathetically as he can manage whenever people eye the stump where his brushtail used to be.

 

Let them pity him. Let them think it’s the loss of the venom that makes him mild, and not his own choice. As long as they think him pitiful, they will never think him dangerous. 

 

_ (You know, it really is a shame that they can’t be declawed, _ he once heard a human woman say, in a voice that she probably thought was too quiet for him to hear, and the sphinx walking by her side - who definitely knew James could hear him, and so, it seems, simply did not care - agreed with her.)

 

It’s all right. He’s all right. It’s better this way -  _ look at poor little Jemmy Madison, his health is so very fragile now, but at least he’s tame. _

 

Let them think he’s tame. Let them think he’s harmless. They took James’s venom but he still has his claws, and nobody can ever take away his mind. 

 

(That being said: It would be a lie to say that he never looks at Thomas’s wings and wishes he could be respected without qualifiers, or that he never eyes Hamilton’s completely intact scorpion tail with an envy that threatens to claw through his chest. It would be a lie to say that the stump of his own tail doesn’t still ache, even a decade later.) 

 

It’s all right. He’s all right. James will come out on top, in the end. He has access, influence, power. That’s worth a pound of flesh. It’s worth a lifetime of chronic pain. It is. 

  
(Isn’t it?) 


End file.
